Inside Unilever: From Half-Year Growth to Uncovering Fake Influencers

Unilever, a force in consumer goods industry, once again proved its strong level of reputation: their beauty and personal care unit continued to grow over the past half-year. And now, their quest to eradicate fake online influencers is getting a lot of thumbs-ups from brands all over the world.

Beauty and Personal Care Unit: Volume Growth

Over the past six months, Unilever’s beauty and personal care unit continued to grow. The demand for products increased and the sales are outstanding.

Skin care department performed well. This is highly driven by Vaseline’s successful marketing tactics, together with Ponds and Lakme’s latest natural product releases in India. In hair care, Dove and Sunsilk drove massive growth for the company, which is caused by the use of natural but on-trend ingredients for hair products. For deodorants, Rexona antibacterial stain protection also drove sales for the company. The growth over the past half-year are undeniably exceptional, and that is driven by the use of natural and organic components.

There’s no question why this happened: With the increase in demand for beauty and personal care products, the organization poured their hearts out on market development to meet the demands of consumers. Aside from that, they also expanded their portfolio by leveraging units for attractive segments and channels. Just recently, the multinational company announced its acquisition on a 75% stake with Italian personal care business Equilibra. This is then followed by a series of acquisitions for beauty and personal care.

Unilever seeks to continue diversifying more units. Expansion is also on its way for products to never run out of stocks.

Combating Fake Influencers: Followers, Likes and Bots

Social media is a place of never-ending possibilities. But it’s also undeniable that there are those who are taking advantage of it in the wrong way. Fake likes, fake followers driven by bots are prevalent—it seems like authenticity is hard to find nowadays. With giant brands advertising through social media platforms like Instagram, an industry of influencers sprung up, in which famous people in the internet earn money by posting products from brands. But the number of their followers can be tweaked by purchasing fake followers. Yes, the practice of buying followers is damaging one of the fastest-growing areas of advertising. Most influencers today are misleading the brands they work with. They’re buying fake followers and likes to give an impression of popularity and engagement—this has to stop. This is not only hurting the relationship between brands and “honest” influencers, this is also hurting the industry itself. Unilever, with its own resources, plans to combat this problem.

“There are lots of great influencers out there, but there are a few bad apples spoiling the barrel and the trouble is, everyone goes down once the trust is undermined.”

image courtesy: Linkedin Business Solutions

Unilever’s CMO Keith Weed stated that they will not work with fake influencers. The organization is planning on stamping out fraud and increasing transparency. Furthermore, they might also pull out their investment on digital platforms. This is specific to who are not taking steps in removing “toxic” online content.

CONCLUSION:

Consistency will get you the fruit of hardwork: in Unilever’s case, they were able to get more than what they expected in just a span of six months because of it.

Listen to your consumers as much as you can. In short: Meet their wants and needs.

Brands should be careful in choosing their influencers. Only work with real and verified ones.